e has shown her his intellectual
superiority and his wisdom.

Woman is as willing to be ruled as ever she was--she always adores a
master; but she has grown too intelligent to bow her head just because
a man is a _man_--he must be _the man_. Man is naturally fighting for
his old omnipotence, which he possessed regardless of his personal
endowment, simply because he was a male creature--and the foolish
section of woman is fighting man, with bombs and tricks and frantic
words, instead of _convincing_ him by her wisdom and attainments, by
her demonstrations of knowledge of life and its duties and
responsibilities, that she has grown at last indeed fitted to be
treated as an equal and a comrade, not as a plaything and a slave.

Who does not respect a woman who fulfils all her obligations with
grace and charm, whose house is well ordered, whose friends are well
entertained by her fine mind, and whose children are well brought up
and full of understanding? She is indeed more precious than rubies and
far more full of influence for the good of her community than she who
shouts of rights and wrongs and votes and such-like. The first woman
could control a hundred votes, and help a government, but the second
can only clog the wheels of the sex's advancement.

Now we get back to marriage!

And the first and foremost thing to be understood is that it is a
frightful responsibility to undertake, and that all those who enter
into this bond lightly and for frivolous motives, or from just
drifting, will be made by fate to pay the price.

Think of it! Two people stand up and swear before God to continue to
love one another until death do them part. They solemnly stand there
and make vows about an emotion over which they have no more control
than they have over the keeping of the wind in the south. They have
only control, if they have strong wills, over its demonstration. And
then in nine cases out of ten neither thinks for a moment afterwards,
of his or her responsibility _of trying to make possible_ the
observance of these vows, by keeping alight the flame of love in the
other's heart. A man utterly disillusions a woman and then blames her,
not himself, for her ceasing to care for him, and being eventually
attracted by some one else! A woman disgusts or bores a man, and then
bewails her sad lot, and calls the man a brute for being indifferent,
and a shameful creature for looking elsewhere for consolation! In all
marriages there is